What a buzz!!

And no - I'm not talking about Google Buzz at all! (Although... I have recently joined up on Google+ - the verdict is still out on that one.)


The buzz I'm referring to the one I get when I learn new stuff. I'm delivering a professional growth course for some of our staff, starting next week Wed, and for the following 4 Wed mornings. In my head, I'm calling it "Whizz Bang!" It looks at the basics of how to use animations in PPT, and how to find and download images, videos and music. Then, if there's time, I'll teach them how to create their own animations using Automatoon - or maybe teach them how to create a Prezi.


Anyway, as part of this whole thing, I had to be sure that I know how to do all those things. I wanted to create a fun way for people to learn at their own pace, so I decided that for the animations in PPT thing (which is something that others will no doubt want to learn) I would create my own training video, which I can save onto the server, so people can access it themselves.


Only one problem with this. I had no idea how to do it. So I set about learning how. And I did, in fact, manage to do just that. Unfortunately, since it's nearly 100Mb (yup... I guess I used the wrong video codec...) I'm not going to upload it onto the web (that will take about 2.5hrs!). Instead, I'll simply transfer it directly to the school server. That means that I can't show you what I did.


But I'm still very proud of myself for having learnt how to use a new piece of software while designing something that any of our staff can use in their own time to learn a skill that will definitely improve their PPTs. (Some of our staff only learnt how to use PPT at the beginning of this year, and that was the most basic info only.)


So herewith, a HUGE pat on my back.


Now, of course, I still need to finish my Prezi, and there's still a pile of marking to do. I'm hoping the buzz will last long enough through tomorrow that I'll be able to get through the boring stuff...

Google Analytics

A while back one of the bloggers I followed did a post about the stats she was collecting on her blog, through some software that tracks who reads it. I thought it was interesting, so decided to do the same, signing myself up for Google's free package, called Google Analytics (GA).

Now before you all panic and think I'm out to stalk you (or something equally ridiculous), remember that most sites you visit (I'm talking non-blog sites now) track data. That's partially what cookies are used for. It's just that you're not aware of it, and so it doesn't bother you.

You'll be pleased to know that the free version of GA does protect your privacy in that it doesn't tell me who you are. It does, however, tell me what city you're from, how long you stay on my blog, and how many pages you read. If you return to my blog, it also records that data (although that is a more general piece of info - it's not linked to you specifically, just that x number of people returned y number of times).

What I was particularly interested to learn was that there are two regular readers who use a French language browser (I'm not sure whether their browser translates it for them, or whether they read it in English). What was more amazing is that they each read about 3 pages every time they visit (most people only read 1 page per time), and that they spend about 10 minutes on the blog each time they visit (most people spend less than a minute). That's incredible!!! I only know one person who might be using a French browser, and I doubt she would be taking 10 minutes to read that amount of info from my blog, so I seriously doubt it would be her.

So, all of this begs the question: if I've just described you, who are you????? What do you find so fascinating about the details of my little life that you keep returning here? Are you just using my blog to practice your English (which is fine with me), or is there something else that keeps you coming back? I'm not saying 'go away', please don't misunderstand me! I'm just intrigued that you find my musings sufficiently worthy of a return visit, so I'd like to know more about you.

I'm sure that a lot of hits are from people who are just randomly trawling through Blogger, hitting on that 'Next blog' button. I'm sure that they will never return this way. As I've only been tracking the blog for about 3 weeks now, I don't really have a lot of data to go on. Still, it is fascinating.

Amatomu is the other site I've been using to track my blog. Amatomu is primarily a site where all registered SA blogs are listed and ranked (today my ranking was 843... I don't know how many are registered, but Nellie's was ranked 2000-and-something, so I would guess quite a few) based on the number of people who read them. From Amatomu I've learnt (no surprises here) that the more I blog, the more people will visit and read my blog. I've also learnt that when I talk about deep, heavy, meaningful stuff, people stop visiting. I guess that's to be expected - folk read blogs as a distraction, a bit of fun, so reading something heavy is not their cup of tea.

From all this, I'm sure some of you will be thinking that now I'm going to start writing to my audience - targeting my writing at the style that will attract more people to my blog. I really hope I never do that. Of course, it's a temptation, but this blog is meant to be a kind of journal for me, and a kind of news bulletin for friends & family around the world, so I hope I can keep it that way.

Anyway, I really need to get to that packing now, and I am now DESPERATE for that cup of tea... so, I will detangle myself from 'Nicole world' (as G calls it), and get back to real life.

Girls are stronger than boys

I have several RSS feeds of a science nature that I subscribe to. Sometimes I find really fascinating things - like this story. A study has been done looking at infant mortality on a gender basis. What has been discovered is that boys are 60% more likely to be premature, and are more likely to die as a result. They are more susceptible to birth injury and respiratory distress. This is because they generally have bigger bodies and heads than baby girls.

What is really interesting though, is that the survival rate for boys has increased as neo-natal care has improved and as more C-sections are performed, thereby reducing the risk of fetal distress and injury during labour. In fact, C-section rate for boys is approximately 20% higher than for girls!

We girls always knew we were stronger than men!

Voiceless phone calls

This is incredible! OK, at the moment it's really slow... but imagine all that you can do with this in a little while!